Barnes.

Bernhard Kreinz

Thinking, building, teaching.

Engineer since the acoustic coupler. Taught the web before it was the web. Built a social network before Facebook. Wrote a cyber threat taxonomy because none existed.

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Personal opinions. Not related to any actual or former employer.

9essays 32tracks 5talks 10films 26pictures 4projects

Essays & analysis

Essays

Paradigms, taxonomies and the failure modes of consensus in cybersecurity — written in English and German.

Who

About

Bernhard Kreinz — “Barnes”

Since the first publication, my focus has been on understanding and applying technologies in the context of the internet: infrastructure, engineering, software development and knowledge transfer.

Role
Independent researcher · engineer · coder · risk analyst · philosopher · mathematician
Active since
1984 — Commodore 64 & acoustic coupler
On the net
1994 — present
Studies
University of Zurich, 1990–1995 — analytical philosophy (philosophy of science & logic), mathematics, theoretical physics
Focus
Philosophy of science & logic, mathematics, theoretical physics — applied to cyber risk, threat taxonomy and information

The tools change. The mission doesn’t: knowledge is good — being able to apply it is better.

LinkedIn Twitter / X YouTube: Barnes Projects
  1. 1984Commodore 64 & acoustic coupler — first contact
  2. 1990University of Zurich — analytical philosophy, mathematics, theoretical physics
  3. 1994Static IP experiments — a private internet presence begins
  4. 1997barnes.ch goes online
  5. 1998Teaching the SIZ webmaster courses, until 2000
  6. 2005OKorNOK.com — a social network before the platforms
  7. 2022Focus on cyber risk management
  8. 2024tlctc.net — the threat taxonomy gets its own home
  9. 2026Back to my roots — LEM, lem-lean and the Typed Crossings paper
“The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm is a conversion experience that cannot be forced.” — Thomas Kuhn (attributed)

Built to last

Projects

A return to logic and proof, a threat taxonomy, a social network before the platform era, and the course material that taught the web’s protocols.

The minimal formalisation of Layered Event Modelling: nodes partitioned by layer, typed edges, a duration defined on causal edges only, layer state spaces and declared co-reference, next to the matching Lean 4 definitions from lem-lean.

Logic & proof · roots 1990 · since 2026

Back to my roots

Thirty years after logic and philosophy of science in Zurich, the old questions are back: what is an event, which layer does it belong to, and what survives when something crosses from one layer to the next?

Layered Event Modelling (LEM) is the method: events typed by layer, edges typed by kind. lem-lean formalises it in Lean 4, so a machine checks the definitions and theorems. Typed Crossings is the paper: what casts, refinement proofs and chain-of-thought checks carry across a boundary, and where that stops.

It started here as two essays, Invisible Coercions and Where Does a Model Reason? The paper revises and extends them.

Paper: Typed Crossings Method: LEM Proofs: lem-lean
The TLCTC logo: ten threat clusters arranged around a decagon.

Framework · author · since 2024

TLCTC

The 10 Top Level Cyber Threat Clusters: every cyber attack classified by its initial cause, the generic vulnerability being exploited, not by its effects. Ten mutually exclusive clusters, derived from axioms by logical deduction.

It started here as White Paper v1.4. It landed at tlctc.net, where the framework is published and maintained today.

Where it landed: tlctc.net Where it started: v1.4
The OKorNOK start page: OK oder NOK?

Conceived 1994 · launched 2005 · still running

OKorNOK

One of the first social-network prototypes, conceived in 1994 — human connectivity before the platform era. “Who’s coming? Who’s not? Yes, I was here before Facebook, but without the entrepreneurship.”

Today the platform keeps the whole technology stack in active duty: applied knowledge over theory.

Open okornok.com
The webmaster era: a page from the course days.

Teaching · SIZ webmaster courses · 1998–2000

Teaching

The original course documents that taught the protocols behind the web — written for the SIZ webmaster courses and still readable today.

Reference: the RFC Editor

Sound

Cyber Standards Blues

Engineering humour set to music: blues, rock, rap and pop about standards chaos — plus podcasts and talks on threat clusters and attack velocity.

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Films

Short films

The Barnes Projects series on knowledge, logic and causal models — numbered, every source linked, on YouTube ↗ — plus animations and music videos about standards, threat clusters and how to think a problem through.

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Pictures

Visual records

Rants, AI art, merchandise and diagrams — the pictures that went along with the arguments.